^{This aerial photo taken on Nov. 15, 2022 shows a view of the Shanghu national urban wetland park in Changshu, east China"s Jiangsu Province.(Xinhua/Yang Lei)}

NANJING, May 20 (Xinhua) -- For Wang Yanqing, a native of Wuxi City, east China"s Jiangsu Province, successfully building a renowned company in his hometown is like a dream come true.

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Wang is chairman of Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., which has grown from a three-person factory founded in 1999 to a global new energy equipment manufacturing giant with 17,000 employees.

His company"s products are widely used to make batteries for iPhones and power batteries for automobile brands like BMW, Volkswagen and Tesla.

Due to his outstanding contributions to the development of the coastal economic powerhouse province, Wang was invited to attend a conference held by the provincial government on Saturday.

Themed "Love Jiangsu and Build a Dream Together," the third Jiangsu Development Summit gathered more than 1,000 renowned guests, including 420 from overseas, from fields such as technology, education, healthcare, commerce, media and finance.

The participants share a strong connection with Jiangsu, with about 70 percent born or raised in the province. The province hopes to promote high-quality growth by pooling the wisdom of home-grown talents.

Over the years, these talents and elites have made important contributions to the province"s economic and social development, said Yang Genping, a Party official of the province.

As an economic heavyweight in the Yangtze River Delta region, Jiangsu"s gross domestic product grew by 4.7 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2023, exceeding 2.9 trillion yuan (about 412 billion U.S. dollars).

The development summit is followed by four themed forums, including the Purple Mountain technology forum, the Yangtze River business forum and the Jiangsu cultural development forum.

Zhang Hui, vice president of the Canada Jiangsu Overseas Federation Society, felt excited to participate in the summit. "I hope to use the summit as a platform to call on the government to introduce more policy support for research and exchange between industries and universities," she said.

Zhang is a native of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, and has been active in promoting people-to-people exchanges by assisting around 10,000 Jiangsu students to pursue further education abroad after founding an overseas study information consulting firm in her hometown in 2009.

"I will also advise the government to carry out more talent cultivation and exchange programs, and give full play to the advanced industries overseas to promote the development of Jiangsu," she said.

Zhang Shouting, executive chairman of the Nordic Sustainable Development Association, still remembers how he jumped at the opportunity at the previous summit. The first and second Jiangsu development summits were held in 2017 and 2019, respectively.

Zhang has been engaged in connecting scientific and technological resources between Northern Europe and China for a long time. He recalled that thanks to the summit, he collaborated with the Nanjing municipal government to set up an overseas talent innovation station in the city.

"We have cooperated with the Finnish investment promotion agency and the Danish innovation center to jointly promote cross-border roadshows and biopharmaceutical and digital healthcare industry cooperation conferences," Zhang said.

"Many breakthrough achievements have been made. For example, we have obtained a business license for a project aimed at treating Alzheimer"s disease," he added.